Chapter 7: Losing Grip

As it turned out, once she'd gotten the hang of it all, Wanda didn't find high school to be all that bad. Sure, she still sucked at all her classes. Secretly having the reading level of a ten-year-old wasn't exactly helpful when working on an essay about To Kill a Mockingbird, but after a week of never saying a word in class, her teachers finally got the hint that she wasn't all that keen on answering any questions.

Even if they tried, Wanda would just flash the bandages around her neck. They'd get an awkward, sad expression and simply call on another person.

Yeah, Wanda loved when people looked at her with pity. Even Clint constantly gave her pitiful smiles and sad looks that just screamed "this is my fault." It took all Wanda's willpower not to roll her eyes. It was almost as good as when people looked at her like she was two seconds away from nuking the place.

Despite feeling more comfortable in school, the only thing that Wanda couldn't get past was Agatha Harkness's door.

It was still in between the library, and the offices like it always was. The weathered oak face still clashed horrendously with the white walls and linoleum floor, but no one seemed to notice. Any student that passed by didn't even give the door so much as a glance. It was like they were completely blind to its presence.

Maybe they were. Maybe the door was just meant for her like it was Agatha's way of saying, 'Decide because one day I'll be gone.'

It had been a week since Wanda had met Agatha, but every time she thought about Agatha's offer, it still made her head turn. While she could probably accept that magic existed and she was a witch whose powers were amplified with the Mind Stone, Wanda only trusted Agatha as far as her noodle arms could throw her.

While Agatha did make it very clear that Wanda was a ticking time bomb, it didn't mean she was offering to train Wanda out of complete altruism. There had to be an ulterior motive — she had to be planning on taking advantage of Wanda somehow. She just couldn't think of how Agatha would do it.

But if Nat had taught her anything, it was to always keep her guard up, and Wanda refused to be taken advantage of again.

So, no. Wanda didn't care what Agatha had to offer her. She was perfectly fine figuring out her powers on her own.

At least when school ended, Wanda found that the best part of her day was the few hours she spent at Peter's apartment. Between Peter constantly pestering her for a sleepover at the compound and May pushing all kinds of homemade Italian meals into her backpack, Wanda almost felt like an average teenager

Wanda sat at the little card table like usual, slowly reading a short chapter book Peter had gotten her from the library while he curled up on his bed and rifled through his physics homework, which Wanda didn't even try to understand. They mostly sat in silence, outside of Wanda's music playing in the background until Peter slammed his textbook in frustration, making Wanda jump a little.

"I'm so done with this," he groaned as he plopped the book on the other side of the bed. "Hey, wanna go on patrol with me?"

Without waiting for an answer, he pulled off his jacket, revealing the bright red Spiderman costume underneath.

Wanda's eyes widened as she furiously shook her head.

Peter's shoulders sagged. "Why not? I'll have you back before Mr. Hawkeye comes to get you. It'll just be a quick once-over of Midtown, and then we'll come back."

She glanced up at the ceiling, trying to remember the sign, before pointing to herself and then tapping the backs of her open fingers together.

Peter's face fell. Wanda had been teaching him what little sign language she knew, but honestly, he picked it up way quicker than her. "You're afraid they'll take you back to prison?"

Wanda nodded. Simply remembering the constant pain of hunger that gnawed at her gut and the shocks that seared her body from the inside out made her stomach flip so violently she wanted to vomit.

She couldn't go back there. She refused.

Peter must've seen the sickly fear in Wanda's face. He plopped back on his bed and started playing with his lower lip as he tried to think. "Well, the UN doesn't know I'm Spider-Man. They only know that I'm tutoring you, right?"

She nodded.

"Then we should be fine," he shrugged. "It's not like you're gonna use your powers or anything."

He had a point. After coming back from Hell, Wanda couldn't even muster a spark. Then when she came home from her first day of school, she immediately passed out on her bed until 2 AM. And all she did was make her eyes glow! If she couldn't do that, she doubted she would be able to do much Avenging.

"You'll just be some kid in a hoodie to everyone," Peter went on. "I don't know if you've noticed, but people as a whole are pretty unobservant. They're not gonna put two and two together and know who you are."

Wanda mulled this over. Her stomach still churned at the mere threat of being sent back to Hell, but another part of her was just as bored as Peter.

She bit the inside of her lip, hoping to God she wasn't going to regret this, and slowly nodded.

"YES!" Peter cheered as he slipped on his mask, the big white lenses flooded with excitement.

He took her crutches, webbed them to his back, then swept her up in his arms and dove headfirst out of his window. Wanda wrapped her arms tightly around his neck as the wind ripped through her red hair. A flurry of cuss words filled her head at the thought that the only thing that kept the public workers from scraping her off the sidewalk was one of Peter's arms.

"It's okay!" Peter shouted over the wind, "I won't drop you!"

How did that not make her feel any better?

Then again, she remembered the first day Pietro was allowed to test his superspeed. He swept her up just like Peter did and took off running. Wanda thought her skin was going to fly off her face from the sheer amount of wind pressure that came with running hundreds of miles per hour. She had screamed at him to put her down, but he told her everything would be fine if she just opened her eyes.

So, despite herself, Wanda dared to pry her eyes open.

Wanda met her own reflection on the glass side of a building. They looked shinier and more full in the afternoon sun, unlike before in the one-sided window at R.A.F.T., where they were bland and lifeless. She reached out, her fingertips just touching the glass when suddenly Peter dived headfirst towards the street.

A hoarse scream bubbled in Wanda's burning throat as she watched the tops of the buildings get further and further away. She gripped Peter even tighter but refused to close her eyes again. Right when Wanda thought they were going to be licking pavement, she swung between the rushing cars and back into the canopy of the city. Wanda grinned madly as she watched all the cars shrink away to the size of ants.

The two finally landed in an empty alleyway, and Wanda could hear her heart beating from the adrenaline rush. She plopped down on the ground, taking deep breaths through the massive smile that was still plastered to her face.

"D'you have fun?" Peter asked as he pulled her crutches off his back.

Wanda nodded as she tried to control her breathing.

"You think in return I could get a visit to the Avengers Compound?"

She looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. Peter didn't even look at her. He just rubbed the back of his neck nervously.

"Y'know, for a movie night," he mumbled.

Wanda mused. Yeah, right. Just a movie night...and a personal meet and greet with the rest of the Avengers. Peter quickly thwipped out a web and launched himself out of the alleyway by a lamppost.

Aside from the web-swinging, Wanda felt disappointed with how boring the first half of patrol was. For maybe an hour she just hobbled as closely to Peter as possible, careful to keep her hood up and her head low so no one would recognize her. She watched him stop a few carjackers, purse snatchers, or even give directions to lost tourists, but what entirely shocked her was how friendly everyone was to him.

Wanda would watch Peter sit on a rooftop or interact with people, and they'd always smile at him or say hi. No one ever did that to Wanda. They would either ignore her, scrutinize everything she did, or write hit pieces about her on the news.

The media always glorified Steve and Nat, though. Steve had a whole museum section dedicated to him, and he had to do promotion stuff like film school PSAs or make speeches. Nat was on magazine covers all the time. Once, she was on a Cosmopolitan as "America's Most Dangerous Woman," but, once Nat explained it to her, that had a different meaning than Wanda initially thought.

But Wanda? No, she was only a weapon of mass destruction.

As Peter gave a Hispanic family directions to the best pizza place in Spanish, a woman nervously shuffled up and tapped him on the shoulder. After he had sent the family on their way, the woman pulled him aside and started whispering to him.

Wanda, who had seated herself on a bench, was too far away to know exactly what the woman was saying. Still, Peter must've said something encouraging to her because all her worry visibly started melting away. He gave her a thumbs up, and she followed suit before leaving.

Peter turned to Wanda and jerked his head towards an alley, signaling it was time to go.

One equally exhilarating web trip later, Wanda found herself outside of a shipping yard off the coast of the East River. Past the stone fence were impossibly tall stacks of massive shipping containers in all kinds of vibrant colors. On top of the multicolored, metal maze sprouted the tips of huge yellow cranes.

Peter picked Wanda up again. He webbed both of them up to the operator's box at the top of one of the cranes. It gave Wanda a perfect view of almost everything in the shipping yard, and just below them were maybe ten people wearing hardhats and neon vests looming around a container. A bunch of dockworkers wouldn't be all that suspicious if they also weren't carrying guns and crowbars.

Wanda's eyebrows furrowed as she leaned closer towards the guardrail to get a better look. She wondered what they were looking for.

"They don't look like they work a typical 9 to 5," Peter whispered as he did the same.

One man stabbed his crowbar into the lock of one of the containers, easily prying it apart with a loud crack, then a mountain of a man grabbed the edge of the door and yanked it open. The steel door flew off like it was tin foil and crashed into the concrete dock.

Wanda flinched at the sound.

Peter turned to her, his white eyes narrowing. "I'm gonna go get closer. You stay here where it's safe," he whispered, his voice a lot more severe than his usual nervous and joking self.

Wanda nodded as she watched him jump over the railing and silently land on top of a lamp post.

As the so-called workers started investigating the inside of the shipping container, Peter jumped down behind them with a surprisingly relaxed demeanor.

"Hey, guys!" Peter said in a chipper tone. "D'you lock your keys inside? I hate when that happens."

Three gunmen whipped around. Their barrels pointed at Peter. He shot his webs at two of the gunmens' faces, blinding them, and then launched himself at another, slamming his knee into the man's face. The gunman crumpled to the ground while the two he blinded were still trying to pry the webs off their faces.

The other three opened fire on Peter, who easily dodged each bullet. The explosive sound of the guns sent a shockwave through Wanda's body.

Wanda watched as the large man picked up the steel door and hurled it at Peter while his back was turned. With unnaturally incredible reflexes, Peter backflipped over the door as it embedded itself in one of the legs of the crane. It groaned and shifted, and Wanda's stomach jumped as she held on tighter to the guard rail.

"Get out of here," the man rumbled.

Peter shrugged nonchalantly. "See, I would, but then my street cred would get ruined."

The man glared at him and turned, grabbing the underside of another steel container. He strained as the three-ton container started to lift off the ground, and to Wanda's horror, held it over his head. With an insane amount of speed and power, he hurled it at Peter.

Peter shot a web at one of the legs of the crane and swung around, slamming his foot into the man's face. The container crashed against the crane, rattling it and throwing Wanda against the wall of the operator's box, knocking the wind out of her. The crane groaned even louder, tilting to one side.

Wanda let out a burning cough as she tried to get the air back in her lungs. She climbed back up to the edge of the guard rail, just in time to see Peter get thrown by his ankle against a wall of containers with a sickening crunch. A massive dent was left in the steel side as he crumpled face first against the concrete ground, and Wanda's heart started pounding when he didn't get back up.

He just laid there like a doll.

Wanda's throat tightened. Her breathing got shallower and shallower. The dent that Peter's body left started looking bigger and deeper. Her hands gripped the railing tighter and tighter.

Please get up, she thought, hoping Peter could hear her.

He still didn't move.

The remaining gunmen edged closer to Peter, their guns leveled at his terrifyingly still body. All the air was sucked from her lungs. Her sight went hazy, and the sudden reek of smoke and blood curled up her nose. The sound of machine guns shook her to her core. She could feel each bullet slowly tear through her body, ripping it apart like it was fabric. Her heart, which once hammered in her chest, started fading, getting softer and slower until—

"PIETRO!"

Red consumed Wanda's vision, and her hands contorted almost on their own. When the bullets fired, Wanda conjured a shield in front of Pietro's body. Red consumed the man who dared to hurt her brother, and Wanda slammed him into the concrete hard. Her chest ached as sobs wracked her body. Hot tears streamed down Wanda's face, and her jaw tightened as she slammed him into the ground over and over again until the red finally fizzled away, and everything went black.

"...anda… Wanda… Wanda!"

Wanda's eyes snapped open to the blinding sun. She winced, holding her hand out as she tried to block out the light. A dull ringing pierced her ears, and a pounding migraine razed her brain.

"Hey, Wanda! You with me?"

Despite the sunlight, Wanda peeled her eyes open to see Peter leaned over her. His mask was partially off, revealing the lower half of his face and one of his worried eyes.

"Are you okay?" he asked, his voice brimming with anxiety. "You really scared me for a second."

Wanda's eyebrows furrowed as the swimming feeling in her head refused to go away. She pulled herself into a sitting position and kneaded her eyes with the heels of her hands. Bright colors danced behind her eyelids, and the pavement beneath her felt like shifty sand.

Peter's hand rested on her back. "Hey, just take it easy."

As the world started to stop spinning so violently, Wanda finally managed to open her eyes. Her gaze landed on a massive crater, and, to her horror, the craggy debris was coated with blood. Wanda's stomach lurched, and her hand clapped over her mouth.

Did she do that?

Peter must've caught her staring. "No, it's okay," he quickly said, "No one died. After you passed out, you fell off the crane, and they ran away."

Wanda let out a deep sigh of relief before putting her head between her knees. She strained to remember what happened before she blacked out. The last thing that crossed her mind was everything going white and then...Pietro. But it wasn't like her nightmares where she was visited by his bloody corpse riddled with bullet holes. She didn't even see her brother — just felt him.

For the rest of the day with the Parkers, Wanda was completely out of it. Her massive migraine refused to leave, to the point where Wanda questioned downing an entire bottle of Ibuprofen just to see if it would work.

On the car ride back, Wanda tried hard to keep everything out of her mind. All the thoughts that had bubbled up from the last week kept pressing against her skull. She thought worrying about Agatha and Gyrich would be enough mental stress, but then today at the shipyard and Pietro happened, and she felt like she was losing her mind. As soon as the SUV engine started, Wanda plugged her headphones in and flooded her ears with Avril Lavigne.

Wanda's head thunked against the tinted glass.

"You doing okay, kid?" Clint said over Wanda's music.

She suppressed an eye roll as she yanked out an earbud. Yes, she signed.

Clint didn't seem to like that answer. His eyebrows furrowed, and he scooted closer to her, placing his hand on her knee. "Wanda, you've been worrying me a lot recently," he said, "and I know things have been tough on you, but please don't shut me out. I want to help."

He could not be serious right now. Wanda stared at Clint in disbelief, but his expression was steadfast. And the absolute downtrodden look he had on his face filled her with a burning aggravation.

Wanda took a breath, jerking her knee away from Clint's hand. She quickly signed "Please leave me alone" before plugging her headphones back in, but for the entire ride home, she could feel Clint staring at her.

She was so tired of this. She was tired of people looking at her like she was either a lost, fragile little girl or an actual war criminal. What's worse, Wanda was tired of only ever giving them valid reasons to act this way. She had no control over her powers. She couldn't protect anyone around her without throwing a temper tantrum and then blacking out. At this rate, how long until Vision, or Peter, or anyone else died because of her? How long until Wanda's absolute inability to do anything right actually did cause the world to end?

Y'know what? Fuck it. Wanda didn't care about the consequences anymore. Tomorrow, she would kick down Agatha's door and demand to be the old hag's student even if it killed her.

(A/N: Hey guys! I hope you're enjoying the story so far! Also know that my newest story Homefront has been out for a while, which is a domestic fluff one-shot series about Wanda's time in the compound, and heavily focuses on her past relationship with both Steve and Nat. So if you're interested in that, go take a look! Also if you like what I'm doing here, be sure to favorite and review.

Until next time :))